


A Rapture in Blue

by kelppy



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 23:15:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6133468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelppy/pseuds/kelppy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke and Lexa, in the jazzy decades of the 1940s/50s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Rapture in Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I claim to know little to nothing about the Jazz Age other than what I've read. Also, I'm aware that the Jazz Age was in the 1920s till the 1930s but Wikipedia says jazz lived on in American pop culture so I will take it. This is post-WW2, by the way. 
> 
> Raven has a bad leg, not in a brace, but it hurts in the mornings or when it gets cold. Otherwise it's functional.

_They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered._

—This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

It was a fine May weather they were having. Hot and humid and swamped with the faint evocativeness of bananas and coffee that made each breath heavy on the lungs.

Lexa sat on a rickety wooden chair in her cold water flat, the radio playing a jazz quartet in the back, crackling with the effort of straining trumpets and Saxes, as she mended her clothes with a crooked needle and thread.

She felt sweaty around the mouth, humming along to the tune, tapping her foot to the beat. A bare lightbulb hung from the cracked plaster ceiling, mouldy at the corners from leaky plumbing, and it flickered with the rumbling roar of the train passing on the nearby tracks to the railroad station just down the street.

She tied a double knot, yanked off the excess thread between her teeth and sat back on the creaking chair to assess her work. It was patchy, it was a poor job, Raven could’ve probably done it better—it’d have to do.

Outside there was a slurred yell and a blaring horn and the stuttering clunk of a faulty car engine. It was Louisiana, New Orleans. The opening bars of a ballad, the rhythm thick and solid-sounding, from across the street invited itself into every open window and door. It was New Orleans.

Then came Raven Reyes—bursting from the door, the unstoppable force she was, akin to a rabid dog, looking very raffish in khaki knicker pants and suspenders. All caramelised skin and coal eyes and seeming as if she had something smart to say about everything.

“And how was _your_ day?” Lexa asked as Raven hauled herself to the bathroom, turning in her ladder-backed chair.

Raven grunted as she scrubbed her hands clean. “Not great. Bad leg still can’t dance for shit.”

“Give it time,” Lexa said, not sympathetically.

“I’ll give it more than that if it doesn’t stop working up every time I take a piss. D’you know what a pain it is to have to— _forgeeeet_ it,” —she stretched the word into a lazy drawl—“anyways, you got down to writing yet? Anything? Nothing? Something?”

Lexa clicked her tongue, looking sullen. “I’ve got the title down.”

“Fan-tas-tic.”

“You going out tonight?”

Raven wiped her hands on her pants, leaving darker handprints on them, and collapsed onto the mattress. Her weight shook the entire flat. Lexa winced. Raven folded her arms behind her head and stared ahead thoughtfully.

“Maybe,” she said. “We always could go to Harry’s. Octavia’ll be there…” here, she smiled like the thought pleased her, “and Bell’s always happy to see us. I think Gus’ll be there too. And you’re always telling me how you missed him, so. Maybe we’ll go to Harry’s tonight. Maybe some good booze would unclog the gears in your head.”

“I hope so.”

“Well then, I hope you’re up for dancing.”

 

 

 

 

Harry’s was a jazz club, cramped and full of cigarette smoke and cheap cigars perched on the corner of chapped lips. The venue was most often crowded on a Saturday night, and some of it spilled into the cobblestone streets; singing, drunken revellers causing commotion well into the night.

There was a raised platform for the band, though the aged and the less-than-sturdy wood from the mill had sunken slightly. And it splintered down the sides, making the surrounding radius a revel-free zone because those sons of bitches _hurt_ , and they were a pain to remove. The bar was a ruptured, glossy mess of oak, with shaky cushioned high-stools and a few good chairs that were always occupied by the regular patrons.

Lincoln, an intimidating, hard-boiled but peace-loving man, manned the bar that night, as he always did, because he had the rare ability to fit in the narrow aisle of the bar and still scare overweening or hostile customers off with his hard-jawed look and flexed biceps as he polished glass after glass.

Then there was Murphy. His name was John Murphy, but people just called him Murphy. Maybe because John was too common a first name; it’d have more than one head turning at the call of his first name.

He sat brooding in his corner, making small-talk laced with undercurrents of cynicism no matter what he was talking about—love or the economy or the crowd that night. No one really bothered him.

Raven had abandoned her pants for a more feminine look—a wasp-waisted, red swing dress with small polka-dots to match the glaring red of her lips and hair lusciously curled into glamour waves. She hadn’t bothered with a petticoat. 

Lexa took to a modest dark-coloured pleated skirt, with a white sleeveless blouse tucked into it. Her hair was let down, make-up far less dramatic than Raven’s.

Before they entered, heels clacking on the cobblestone, Lexa had gripped Raven’s elbow and warned her, “Please don’t enjoy yourself _too_ much.”

Raven leaned in and kissed Lexa’s cheek hard, leaving a lipstick mark there. “Just try and stop me.”

The air was thick and dense inside; the band was already set up and playing a Louis Armstrong tune—she couldn’t remember the name now. They immediately steered clear of the dance-floor first and sat by the bar.

Lincoln came over and smiled widely at them, showing teeth, in his best Sunday suit-vest and a white shirt underneath. Raven smiled prettily at him, taking the highball cocktail he slid across the counter, and sipping.

“Hey!” he exclaimed to them both over the band. “You girls are looking swell!”

“Thanks, Lincoln! You seen Octavia?”

He nodded to the dense crowd, “Last I saw she was dancing.”

Raven patted Lexa’s hand on the counter, downed her drink in one go and batted her eyelashes at Lincoln before delving bravely into the thicket of a crowd. Lincoln whistled.

Lexa sipped her drink.

“Write anything yet?” Lincoln asked, setting his palms on the oak and smiling down at her.

Her shoulders sunk a little. “No,” she said. “That’s just funny, isn’t it? A writer who doesn’t know how to write.”

The band had moved on to another high-tempo ballad. Lincoln laughed. “You’ll get there, Lex. Some things can’t be forced. You know what, you should dance, too. Go on and have fun! Let loose a while!”

“Someone’s got to be looking out for her.” Her as in Raven, who behaved like an unrestrained flapper.

Lincoln waved a hand over the crowd vaguely. “Bell’s somewhere in there. I promise I won’t serve him a drop. Now go on!”

She mingled amongst the crowd, ducking away from cigarettes and catching a glimpse of Octavia and Raven dancing in step to the band, laughing and clumsily tripping on their heels and falling into each other. Octavia’s lipstick was smudged and Raven had some on her cheek.

She glanced about for Gus, wondering how it could be so hard to spot a hulking, beast-sized man. The rhythm was hitting it off with a building hi-hat and some scat singing. The crowd, a moving, crazed entity, grew wilder.

Before long she was pin-balling from one person to another, a tawdry man, a young boy with calloused hands at her arms, a pretty older woman with a cigarette in the corner of her thin lips.

And then there was this other woman—voluptuous and generous with her cleavage, in an outdated fashion that still somehow worked for her, with rhinestones and a feathered headband, in a gold dress that glimmered and complemented her light honey hair, rich with waves. Classic beauty.

The woman laughed when Lexa stared for a second too long and was elbowed in the side by a stray elbow. “You’re blushing!”

They had to yell to hear each other over the music.

Lexa blushed even harder, laughing nervously. “It’s the heat!”

Indeed, it was. Trails of sweat glossed the woman’s neck, slender, with kiss-soft skin. The heat the woman emanated.

The music faded into a slower ballad; she recalled hearing a different rendition of the song on the radio—the title had been Blue Moon or something like that.

The woman huddled closer, in a hugging, swaying dance that followed the slippery rhythm. Lexa could consciously feel warm breath on her ear.

Lexa felt something, bass-deep, churning within, like heated pieces of coal that jump about and crackle.

Raven called it ‘rocket fuel’. Lexa understood why.

“You’re stiff as a rod,” the woman said, in a cigarette-roughened, throaty husk that Lexa could feel as strongly beneath her skin as the bass.

“I’ve got two left feet,” Lexa admitted. It was only partly a lie.

But the woman caught on. “Liar,” she accused. “I was watching you. You’ve got the rhythm in your feet.”

Lexa felt her smile. Gulped some saliva.

The thick-lipped singer moaned, “ _Blue moooooon, now I’m no longer alone…_ ” He’s got a good, almost Dean Martin-like voice. Soulful, wistful-sounding, spurring longing looks of heady want between couples and lonely souls. Hell, even Murphy got himself a girl, swaying her around like he was in love with her already.

“You were watching me,” Lexa echoed.

“Well I thought you looked very pretty,” the woman said forwardly.

Lexa blushed deeper shades of red. Sooner or later it’d be the shade of Raven’s red lipstick. “You’re real charming.”

The woman pulled away just slightly to frown. She was nothing like the ditzy, timid blonde-types, Lexa thought. Instead, she had bright and intelligent blue eyes like Cartier diamonds and could hold anyone’s gaze long enough to stop someone at the sidewalks.

Poor lovesick fools.

“Then let me prove it to you. Have a drink with me.”

“Alright, stranger,” Lexa said, unbelievably attracted to the daring in the woman’s voice and the challenge in her eyes.

They parted from the crowd and found themselves a table for two in the corner, where one green-wallpapered wall abruptly cut into wooden panelling, a gin tonic in Lexa’s hand, and a sherry in hers.

“I’m Clarke,” the woman said. “I came for my friend there in the band,” —she pointed—“Wells. He’s the singer up front.”

Lexa sipped at her drink. “He’s very good.”

“He knows,” Clarke smiled. “He also happens to think I’m all-talk.”

“Are you, Clarke?”

Clarke’s smile turned a little cat-like, eyes narrowed slightly, head tilted a fraction to the side. Apparently she enjoyed the way Lexa said her name, the ripe rolling of the tongue that made it so crisp and sharp to the ears.

“Didn’t I say I was going to prove it to you?”

“Then by all means, don’t let me keep you.”

Clarke laughed. “Not so long ago you were blushing like a Sunday schoolgirl.”

“I had a few drinks before. And it was hot,” Lexa argued.

Clarke lifted a fine brow like she didn’t believe it one bit. “Alright.” Then she paused and looked expectantly at Lexa. “You haven’t told me your name.”

“Maybe you’ll have to earn it.”

Clarke drank some sherry, her face immensely amused. “Do I really?”

Lexa nodded.

“Fine. What do I have to do to earn your name?”

Clarke leaned back in her chair, folded her arms like it was a shady business proposal.

Lexa hadn’t thought at all about it. She was trying to be charming and enigmatic but it was about to fail because she could not think of something in exchange for her name. Maybe she should have just given it while the option was still on the table.

Clarke, apparently sensing Lexa’s distress, stretched her smile into something smug and knowing, tilting her head again (it was a habit of hers) to meet Lexa’s eyes that were trained on the glass in her hand.

“So?” Clarke chanced. “What will it be?”

“I’ll…think about it,” Lexa finally decided. Then she quickly added, “I’m not about to give my name away so easily.”

Clarke nodded gravely. Then she asked, “What do you do?”

“I teach. Taught. I was a teacher. Then I quit to become a writer.”

Clarke looked impressed. “That takes some guts.”

“Well, some people would call it foolish and brash. Some people definitely did.”

“I say live your life the way you want it.”

Lexa smiled. “And what do you do, Clarke?”

“Jobs here and there. I was a nurse in the war but when it ended it left me without a job.”

“Oh, I wish I could tell you I’m sorry but I’m happy the war is finally over.”

Clarke laughed warmly and set her hand on Lexa’s knuckles on the table. Lexa’s knee jerked into the table, jostling the glasses and Clarke’s laughter just grew louder in volume at Lexa’s folly. They looked at each other and Lexa felt her mouth go dry. Some mutual understanding had passed between them.

“I…live just across the street,” Lexa managed to rasp.

Clarke nodded and took Lexa’s hand.

Gus would have to wait some other time; she had finally decided on what she wanted in exchange for her name.

 

 

 

 

They weren’t drunk enough but when they were scaling the outside staircase up to Lexa’s shared flat Clarke had begun to grow impatient and nipped at Lexa’s jaw brazenly. Lexa’s hands shook as she handled the keys.

When Clarke pushed her through the door, humming contentedly into the kiss that was steadily escalating into something else passionate and lustful, there was a muted shriek and the panicked rustling of sheets.

There was Octavia, hair wild and tracks of lipstick smears down the side of her neck and along her square jaw, nude and holding sheets up to her chest in a last minute attempt at modesty.

Then there was also a scandalised Lincoln. Then there was a flush in the bathroom and before Lexa could think _oh no_ , Raven had emerged, in the flesh, in a similar state of undress, asking, “What’s the matter…” And trailing off when she saw Lexa and Clarke, who were now frozen by the door.

She immediately retreated into the bathroom and used the door to cover herself. Her head peeked out as she bellowed, “Get out!”

Lexa and Clarke backed out into the doorstep, door shutting in their faces.

There was a tense moment of silence.

Oh no, Lexa thought. Clarke would think she was erratic and odd and that she participated in orgies too, or just threesomes. And while she was rather open to that concept before (and _had_ her share of the exercise—after all, she was a writer), she definitely wasn’t now.

But then Clarke burst out laughing, tears in her eyes, and bending with her palms on her knees when she couldn’t draw breath fast enough.

Lexa frowned, puzzled. She asked, “What’s so funny?”

“No, nothing—it’s not. It’s just that—,” and Clarke’s words dissolved into laughter again.

She was unable to continue and eventually Lexa laughed uneasily. The mood was effectively lost. Lexa mourned it dearly. But it’s passing welcomed something else into the fold—the potential for something else; friends, maybe. Something less intense and more light-hearted and filled with bawdy jokes and laughter instead of kisses and sex.

“Why not we just go to a café?” Clarke suggested, unwilling for the night to be over, and so anti-climactically at that.

Lexa nodded. “There’s one not far from here.”

“Is it still open?”

It was close to ten by then.

Lexa said, “It might just be.”

 

 

 

 

It was closed. But next to it was a drugstore that was still open. They bought lemon-cokes chilled in an ice-box and sat by the cobblestone sidewalks. Somewhere along the night Lexa had chivalrously lent Clarke her rustic tweed jacket she had managed to snag before Raven evicted her from her own apartment.

She draped it over Clarke’s shoulders. Clarke rolled her eyes but smiled, allowed her to do so. Even in May the nights could get cold.

“I’m sorry,” Lexa said. “I guess I owe you my name now. I’m Lexa.”

“That wasn’t such a bad turnout,” Clarke teased. “I had plenty of fun. I’ve seen a lot of things, given the war, but still some things take me completely surprise.”

Lexa chuckled. She brought the mouth of the bottle to her lips and drank. Curious, she decided to ask, “What did you see, in the war?”

Clarke’s face darkened briefly, but it was gone as soon as it came. She drank as a means to delay her answer. “Well,” she said, neutrally, “a lot of blood, guts, amputated limbs—the ordinary.”

“I can’t imagine how it must have been, if blood and guts and detached limbs have become the ‘ordinary’.”

“Well it was,” Clarke said, a little snappishly, but softened it with a hand on Lexa’s knee. “It was war. And every war has its casualties. At the time I had a job to do and I did it. That was all there was to it.”

Lexa nodded. She felt a little guilty for having brought it up. Especially seeing how it had such dire, lasting effects on the woman.

Feeling an inexplicable need to confess something, perhaps because of the yellow moon that hung distended above them, Lexa said quietly, “I didn’t quit teaching. I was retrenched.”

Clarke looked up, surprised. “What? Why?”

Lexa tried her best not to look ashamed, or contrite. But it only became a childish red-faced expression that resembled a child being unfairly scolded. “I had some unconventional practices.”

“I won’t ask if you won’t tell me,” Clarke said. “But I won’t lie that you have captured my interest.”

More than that, Lexa’s rather Bohemian lifestyle had sparked Clarke’s curiosity, where she milked it unconsciously.

Lexa thought, well if she thought the threesome was funny, I suppose…

“I had an affair,” she conceded, “with a student.” And while she told herself that she hadn’t been at all ashamed of the affair, she found herself having to justify herself. “It wasn’t a regular, everyday thing. It didn’t even align with who I am. I refuse to be painted as someone who takes advantage of the innocent and naïve. We went ahead with it knowing fully well what we were doing…” she stopped and her voice petered off, as if realising now that that hadn’t made things any better. “But it was ended. The student was transferred elsewhere and I was told to pack up and leave.”

“Was it a true relationship?” Clarke asked and Lexa flinched. “Oh no, I hadn’t meant it like that. I mean, did you love him…or her.”

“I did,” Lexa insisted stubbornly. “I warned her.”

“I suppose it was just bad timing.”

“I suppose.”

“I had someone, too,” Clarke said. Her face was kept impassive but something else ran underneath. “He was in the infantry. He died in one of the big pushes. We were to be married after the war, if it ever ended.”

“It did,” Lexa softly reminded.

Clarke nodded tightly. Drank her coke. “I know. At the time it felt as if it never would.”

Lexa took Clarke’s hand, cold and wet from the drink, and held it as a means to reassure her.

“He was a good, kind man. God knows I don’t deserve him,” she said, suddenly fumbling with her purse for a cigarette. But she hadn’t a light. She asked Lexa, “Do you have a light?”

Lexa felt the jacket pockets around Clarke, and found a box of matches. She struck one and lit Clarke’s cigarette with it. Clarke took a greedy inhale to steady herself, fingers shaking slightly. With a pinky finger she rubbed at her forehead.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s no point in getting all worked up about it.”

Lexa shook her head. “That’s okay. Do you think I could bum one off you?”

Clarke scoffed smilingly. She offered her own instead and they took turns on it, leaving lipstick stains around the filter.

“Can I…can I see you soon?” Lexa asked unsurely.

“I would like that, yes.”

“When, then?”

Clarke thought about it, staring into the road in front of them, deafening sounds of merrymaking in the distance, and she said, “Tomorrow night, if you’d like. Dinner at eight?”

Lexa exhales white nicotine fog. “Sounds lovely,” she said.

“I’ll pick you up.”

 

 

 

 

Lexa scribbled furiously on a discarded receipt. An idea had took form in her mind, an idea so genius and formidable that it would become a manuscript so threatening to all budding writers.

That was what she thought, and the thought had sustained all the way through, incentivising her vigorous and frenzied writing with a pencil. When the lead was worn down, she sharpened the tip hastily and wore it down again not long after.

Raven was lying on the mattress. She was slightly traumatised by the previous ordeal but by midday she was over it, sharing a plate of pancakes and a pot of coffee.

“So,” she began, “what’s the deal with the lady you brought over last night?”

Lexa didn’t hear her at first, and when Raven cleared her throat, she snapped peevishly, “What?”

Raven repeated herself.

Lexa said, “Oh. Well, something that would have made my entire week if you hadn’t been doing what you did. Which was very naughty, by the way. Poor Lincoln.”

Raven’s scoffed at her back. “ _Please_. Let’s not play Catholic schoolgirl and be honest here. You’ve had your fair share of non-conformist sex.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘kinky’.”

“Sure.”

Lexa wrote the word down by accident and cursed. She crossed it out. And Raven’s waiting silence, she said, “What are you asking, exactly?”

“Are you seeing her?”

“Later, yeah.”

“She’s a looker.”

“Isn’t she?” Lexa hadn’t meant to sound like she was gushing, even when distracted, but, well.

“Do you think you could—“

“No,” Lexa said definitively. “You’re not allowed to have threesomes with her.”

“You never share,” Raven complained. “And yet you always share Octavia with me.”

“Well that’s over now.”

“You’re committing to one person already? You like her that much?”

“I suppose.”

She heard Raven shift on the mattress behind her as she got up and hovered at Lexa’s shoulder. Then she lowered her chin onto the tense muscle, watching Lexa write so hard it left indents on the other side of the paper.

“And look at that,” Raven said. “You’re writing like a madman. This must be her influence. I guess you’ve found your muse, Lex.”

“I’m not writing about her.”

“Well, whatever it is you’re writing about, she helped you get there.”

Lexa had finally transferred all her ideas onto paper—more than several bits of paper, in fact—and she was about to reach for her typewriter when she paused and glanced at the clock. She stood, bringing Raven’s jaw with her.

“Ow, Jesus, Lex.”

“Sorry,” she said, and absently kissed it. “I need your help on what to wear to dinner.”

Raven rubbed at her jaw petulantly, “Where are you going for dinner?”

“A restaurant.”

“Like a formal one with the chardonnays and wine?”

Lexa frowned. “She didn’t specify.”

Raven nodded like she already had something in mind. She went over to the cabinet, missing the doors and only partitioned with a cretonne curtain. Pushing it aside revealed an over-stuffed cabinet fitted with both their clothes.

Raven rifled through it for a moment, brought out some articles of clothing to compare and finally laid out an outfit—a dark wine-coloured sheath dress that clinched at the waist—on the mattress.

“Well you’re better over-dressed than under-dressed,” Raven said.

Lexa had to agree. She patted Raven’s shoulder, “Thanks.”

 

 

 

 

Clarke arrived punctually in a silver Buick. She smiled at Lexa as she descended from the outside stairs, and Lexa had felt so ashamed at the rather dramatic entrance.

She slid into the leather seats and felt strange. It wasn’t that she had never ridden an automobile before, Raven was a mechanic and when she visited her Raven would let her sit in the car and fiddle with the stations. But as she sat there, with Clarke driving—it was a very surreal notion.

It felt so much like a fifty-cent black-and-white at the local cinema.

“So,” Lexa began when Clarke kissed her on her cheek by means of greeting, “you’re rich.”

Clarke laughed. “Does that bother you?”

Lexa frankly nodded. “Just look at where I live.”

“You’re place is lovely, don’t say that. It has personality. And I’m not rich. This isn’t my car. It was loaned to me.”

“You mean you borrowed it.”

“What else would I mean?”

They went to a restaurant at 29th and Harlem. Lexa was glad she wore what she did—it was a fancy place with dimmed lights and tablecloths and crystal ashtrays and cigarette holders.

“Have I told you how beautiful you look yet?” Clarke said as they took their seats (apparently Clarke had made a reservation) by the wall, a little off-centre to the overhead chandelier.

“No, but I could tell.”

“How so?”

“You kept on glancing at me while you were driving. I thought we might have had an accident.”

Clarke laughed and it relieved some of Lexa’s discomfort.

Clarke started off with a martini, and Lexa followed suit. As they waited for their food—duck—Clarke stirred around the olive speared on a toothpick.

“What do you write about?” she asked.

“A great deal of things,” Lexa replied vaguely. It felt wrong to just generalise her writings.

“I would imagine. But what do you _enjoy_ writing about most?”

“Well…” Lexa reached for her martini and indulged herself by taking a sip. She licked her lips, familiarising herself with the taste. “Whatever I’m most inspired to write, I suppose. You won’t get a definite answer there, if you’re looking for it.”

Clarke laughed, “No I guess not.” Then she leaned forward, setting her elbows on the table in a way that was faux pas. “I’m very interested in your Bohemian lifestyle,” she confessed. “Tell me more?”

Lexa frowned but smiled like she was confused. Though she invited Clarke to ask with a, “What do you want to know?”

And they settled into a flowing conversation. Curious was putting it lightly. With Clarke’s invested interest, it seemed more that she was _considering_ the alternative lifestyle.

“I draw, you see,” she said later, when the duck had arrived steaming and glistening with fat on a plate. She humbly laughed, “Not very well, most likely. But—“

“Nonsense. Is there such thing as a poor drawing? Isn’t it all just relative?”

“To some, yes. But unfortunately they don’t drive the market.”

“You want to profit from the art?”

“Ideally, that’s the plan.”

Clarke’s knife and fork criss-crossed expertly as she cut herself a piece of duck meat. The knife slid easily into the tenderly meat; it was a comely pink on the inside.

“Don’t count on it,” Lexa told her. “Artists are well known to live very poorly. You want to drive a Buick, you’ve got to find something else.”

Clarke frowned and this time it was a little disappointed, at the response, at Lexa, she didn’t know. “Let’s not be so quick to say. It’s not _so_ far-fetched an idea.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Lexa said, beginning to feel a little cross herself. She, as an artist struggling to survive, would understand all too well the difficulties one would face. “But that’s all it is. An idea.”

Clarke put down her cutlery, and now her face is marred with ugly disdain. “Must you be so pessimistic?”

Lexa did the same. She felt hot in her dress, and she regretted wearing it now. The smoke from neighbouring cigarettes stung her eyes.

“I’m realistic,” Lexa corrected curtly. “I’m living that reality through and through, Clarke. What you’re thinking of, well, you’re looking at it.”

“I won’t fail where you’ve—,“ and here Clarke cut herself off, realising with widened eyes that she had gone too far.

Lexa finished her martini, took one last bite of the savoury duck, thought, shame that, and stood, patting down her dress for creases. “You’re probably right,” she said, as smoothly as she could. “You’d more likely succeed where I’ve failed. So good luck, and goodbye. It was lovely meeting you.”

She tossed some money on the table and left, clenching her jaw tight. Her eyes stung even outside where it wasn’t clouded with cigarette smoke, she didn’t know why. She wiped at it, angrily, with the humiliation of a grown man caught crying, and stalked off to wherever. She might find herself a telephone booth and call Raven to come get her, or find someone to do that. Maybe Bell.

Of course the charming possibly-rich woman in the leather-seated Buick would succeed where she’d failed. And of course, Lexa told herself, she wouldn’t understand.

She didn’t usually smoke—some days she found it a detestable vice, but some days she embraced it because weren’t all human beings flawed and fundamentally drawn to vices?

Lexa bought herself a pack at a drugstore and smoked one by the sidewalks. It helped her nerves and soon she languidly strolled where she had brisk-walked.

But then a silver Buick drove by her, windows rolled down.

“Lexa!” she called. When Lexa turned instinctively at the call, Clarke pleaded, “Get in the car. Please.”

Lexa pretended not to know or hear her. She walked straight, heels clacking, face turned away.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke said. “Did you hear me? I said I’m sorry. I hadn’t meant what I—“

“Don’t. The least you could do was mean it.”

Clarke looked distraught. She had to swerve to evade a motorcycle parked by the curb and wrestled for a bit with the steering wheel. When she regained her bearings, she said, “But I don’t mean it. I don’t mean what I said. Could you please get into the car? I might hit something.”

“Then hit something.”

Clarke sighed. She drove forward, and Lexa thought for a moment that Clarke had given up and if she had given up that easily and that quickly, she didn’t want someone like her anyway. But Clarke pulled up on a road shoulder ahead and parked the Buick there. She got out of the car to personally escort Lexa to the car.

“Okay,” Clarke placated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said. It was a heat of the moment thing and I get argumentative when I become too…involved in the conversation. But that isn’t an excuse, yes, I’m aware.  But I’m sorry and I just wanted to spend time with you. So even if you don’t feel the same, I would at least like to drive you home.”

Lexa stared at her. “I’m not like you, Clarke.”

“What? Lexa—“

She put out the cigarette, stamping it with the sole of her heel. “I just think that—no, listen—we’re essentially very different people living very different lives.”

“What does that mean?” Clarke frowned like it upset her.

“You know what it means.”

“You would so easily fit me into a single stereotype?” Clarke asked, and for once sounded a little offended, if not hurt. “So I’m a rich person—which I’m not—and I only pursue art for the profit, and I spit on those who pursue art for self and spiritual expression? So you think I look down on people like you and that I pity you and laugh behind your backs while drinking fine wine in a silk robe?” There was a heavy, pregnant pause. “I am…” she rooted around the right word. Lexa mentally supplied: dumbfounded, upset, stupefied. “Disappointed,” Clarke said. Wow, Lexa thought. “You disappoint me, Lexa.”

And she turned and walked away and Lexa followed after, saying, “Hey, listen here; don’t turn this around on me. Don’t make yourself look like a victim.” She got into the car. Clarke said nothing, just gunned it into ignition and drove off. “Well what was I supposed to think? You take me out in a fancy car, go to a fancy restaurant, drink fancy martini and eat fancy duck and you sit there with your fancy, stiff-lipped, upper-classed opinions on art and you tell me you’re disappointed in _me_?” Lexa jabbed an accusatory finger at the silent driver. “I was disappointed, no I still am disappointed in _you_.”

Near-panting with the strenuous effort of her speech, she sat back in the car and pressed a few fingers to her brow, breathed, “Jesus Christ.”

She rolled the window on the passenger seat down and smoked a cigarette, tapping the ashes outside.

Clarke, again, to Lexa’s utter disappointment (there it was again), said nothing. She drove with a single-mindedness that would have been attractive and admirable had Lexa not have been so frustrated.

When the car pulled into Lexa’s driveway she killed the engine, but didn’t move. By then Lexa had finished her cigarette, having thrown it out to the road to be driven over and flattened.

Lexa sat waiting for something, she wasn’t sure what. It felt like nothing had ended yet, but had only been strung up by a tense wire that trembled with its tautness.

When Clarke suddenly leaned over and cupped Lexa’s face, it felt like that was how their evening was supposed to go. By then Lexa was weak and tired and she had said nothing as Clarke kissed her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want it.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke murmured, breath hitting Lexa’s lips.

And it wasn’t that Clarke had taken advantage of the moment; it was how she felt she apologised best—how she felt she communicated best. She wasn’t a writer of words, after all. Of something different, perhaps.

Lexa stared at Clarke’s lips as she pulled away. Again, something passed between them like a solemnly-kept secret no one knew about but the two of them.

Lexa said, “Raven’s home.”

Clarke nodded, started the engine again. “My place is up front.”

This time, the drive had nothing of the angry apprehensiveness and mentally-uttered curses and deliberately thought-out arguments in case the other had anything to say. It felt longer, but it was more with want and need and impatience.

And maybe Lexa had placed her hand on Clarke’s thigh, over the skirt, of course. She was no heathen.

Not entirely.

She hadn’t the time to survey Clarke’s residences at a more respectable estate when Clarke had her pushed against a wall till it shook and a shelving rack rattled.

Her breath tasted of cigarettes and gin, and it was a dizzying kiss. They met tongue and teeth, sometimes blood is drawn and passed into the other’s mouth. Her twitching hand reached up to grip at Clarke’s waist, and then Clarke had guided her off the wall and into a soft feather bed.

She fell first. Saw Clarke’s white ceiling before Clarke hoisted herself above Lexa, hands on either sides of Lexa’s head.

Her eyes were still blue, though dark and more potent. They panted.

“Is this what you want?” Clarke asked.

Lexa nodded, “Yes,” she said breathlessly, “yes.” And pulled Clarke down by the neck to meet her halfway with an open-mouthed kiss.

 

 

 

 

Lexa picked up a framed photograph of Clarke and a boy, taken when Clarke was still only a pre-pubescent girl. The boy had a mischievous yet sweet look about him. He was certainly handsome, with slicked back hair and in a tuxedo. Clarke herself had been in a light-coloured Josephine dress and had a crown of pink roses worn on her head. It was a black-and-white photograph, but from the lightness of the flowers on Clarke’s head she could infer that it hadn’t been red roses, but a light pink. Well, unless they were actually white. Then that was entirely possible, too.

“I had that taken during my aunt’s wedding,” Clarke said from where she sat leaning against the wrought iron headboard, trying to light a cigarette unsuccessfully with a Ronson lighter.

“You looked adorable,” Lexa seriously told her. “And who is this next to you?”

When Lexa had got up to look, she took the sheets with her, wrapped around her like a toga of some sort.

Clarke made a vexed sound that was halfway a growl and a grunt when the cigarette failed to light. Lexa sighed, set the photo back on the desk, and retrieved her purse for a match, straddled Clarke’s hips and lit it up for her, one hand cupped around the flame.

“Thank you,” she said as she seized Lexa’s hips to hold her in place, looking up at her. With the cigarette she gestured to the photo. “That was Finn.”

Lexa lifted her brows. “The both of you were childhood friends?”

Clarke nodded. She watched Lexa intently with something fond in her eyes, and beyond that, something unreadable.

“I’m sorry you lost him,” Lexa said quietly.

Clarke’s eyes hardened. She hid it with a flick of the cigarette into the empty can of peaches on her nightstand that served as an ashtray. “Don’t be. I didn’t lose him. The war took him from me.”

“Still, it must have been terrible.”

“I got by.”

“You don’t have to be brave.”

Clarke made a brief, dismissive sound that annoyed Lexa.

“And what about you? Do you miss your student?” Clarke asked around a cigarette.

“Sure I do,” Lexa replied.

Clarke nodded. “What’s her name?”

“Costia.”

“If she shows up, here, tonight, and told you to go with her, would you?”

Lexa narrowed her eyes. “What kind of question is that?”

 Clarke turned her head to exhale smoke, but her eyes never left Lexa’s. “It’s just a question. If she did, would you?”

“What does it matter?”

Clarke shrugged dubiously.

Lexa said, “If Finn showed up, would you?”

Clarke arched a brow at her. “He can’t. He’s dead.”

“For argument’s sake let’s say he did. Would you?”

Clarke’s jaw hardened. There was something tumultuous in her eyes that predicted an oncoming storm. Her grip on Lexa’s hipbone tightened almost to the point of bruising.

But then something tired flickered in her face and the grip eased. “We keep on fighting,” she sighed.

Lexa was of the same mind. She leaned down, avoiding the burning tip of the cigarette and laid her cheek against Clarke’s shoulder. Her hair, curly and unruly, teased at Clarke’s neck.

In response, Clarke’s hand flattened over her spine, thumb slipping into the notches of her vertebra.

“Will you want to see me again?” Clarke asked wonderingly aloud.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

 

 

 

 

“You know, you’ve been writing a whole lot more nowadays,” Raven noted as she lounged on the mattress with Octavia.

Both were nude under the sheets. Lexa, hair tamed into a ponytail with an escaped strand falling down the side of her face, over her ear, had her back turned to them, typing away on the typewriter, intermittently pressing the carriage return lever at every fresh line.

“When inspiration knocks, you answer,” Octavia supplied for her and Lexa mumbled her thanks.

“That sound your typewriter is making is disturbing us,” Raven said sharply.

Lexa paused, fingers smudged black with ink, then twisted her body to look behind over her chair. “Where would I go, then? Can’t you do that in Octavia’s apartment?”

Octavia’s face distorted, evidently expressing her disapproval and blatant rejection of the idea. “That wasn’t part of the arrangement.”

Lexa asked, “There was an arrangement?”

Raven _tsk_ ed. “Neither was Lexa but you didn’t turn her away that time.”

“Some…exceptions can be made. Some terms are negotiable but this, my place, is off the table.”

“You make sex sound like a business arrangement.”

“Maybe it is, with you,” Octavia said, to Raven.

Raven frowned and tore herself away from Octavia’s side, wounded. “Excuse me? And how exactly did you come last night? If it is a business arrangement then I’d like to be the one coming next time.”

Octavia opened her mouth like she was about to argue, and had a solid point to drive across, but Lexa held her hand up. The argument would impede her process. “I will find elsewhere to write.”

Lexa packed up her typewriter, a portable SM3 Olympia with case grey letters, something she had kept from her previous teaching years, more paper, ink ribbons, and pencils.

Then, at the door, she turned and simpered, “Don’t let me keep you.”

But the pair were already otherwise preoccupied in a kiss with fingers tangling in each other’s hair.

Lexa growled.

 

 

 

 

Lexa knocked on the whisky-dark door of Clarke’s apartment, hoping it was the right one—the last time she was over she didn’t exactly have the time to memorise each detail. But Clarke appeared, a little later, in a fuzzy robe, looking as though she had just been pulled from sleep.

Lexa felt heart-shot all of a sudden. She whispered, even when she had no reason to be whispering, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were sleeping. I’ll go.”

But Clarke shook her head, yawned into a fist and tugged her in by the bend of her elbow.

“No,” Lexa said but allowed herself to be tugged in. “I can go. You’re sleeping. I’m self-employed, which is slang for officially unemployed, so I will go.”

Clarke squinted at her, not understanding her rambling in her sleep-addled state. “What are you saying?”

“I—never mind. I’ll go.”

Lexa made for the door but Clarke held her hand. “No. What is it?”

“It’s just that I have to write. Well, type. But Raven’s busy having intercourse at my—our—apartment and so.”

Clarke nodded, smiled a little, then gestured casually at her wooden desk next to the shelving rack filled with books on human anatomy and medicine. Her own typewriter sat on the corner of her desk. “Use the desk.”

“Oh no,” Lexa said. “I don’t want to interrupt your sleep. Typewriters are loud, you know.”

“I like the sound. It helps me sleep,” Clarke admitted. “As for interrupting my sleep, haven’t you already?”

And so Lexa set up her typewriter as Clarke shed her robe and slipped under the covers, falling back asleep. Clarke had generously told her to help herself to coffee or whatever there was in the ice-box in her kitchen. To which Lexa said, “No, I won’t overstay my welcome any more than I already have.”

“It’d trouble me more to have to get it for you out of courtesy.”

“Fine. Go back to sleep.”

Eventually she spent most of her time there, at Clarke’s apartment, working away at her typewriter until there the beginnings of a manuscript began to reveal itself with every clacking of the keys.

Later in the evening, when Clarke had roused from her sleep and dropped a kiss on Lexa’s head, Lexa volunteered to cook.

Clarke looked disbelievingly at her. “I’m not going to have to call the fire department, do I?”

Lexa glowered. “I learned how,” she said defensively. “When you have someone like Raven as a roommate, you learn to do things yourself.”

Clarke smirked but said, “I’d love to but I don’t think I have much aside from a can of peaches and some eggs and bread. I doubt there’s much to be made from that. Want to go out instead?”

Reminded of the last time they went out, some expression of displeasure must have been evident on her face, because Clarke laughed and said, “Calm down. We won’t go anywhere you can’t wear what you’re wearing to.”

Lexa had been in Raven’s khaki knicker pants, suspenders and white shirt rolled at the sleeves, and she looked down at what she wore with some baffled hurt. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

Clarke laughed again, and conciliated her with a soft, lingering kiss to her mouth, then to her nose. “I daresay you look very handsome.”

Lexa smirked, basking in the moment. In the meantime, Clarke went to peek at the outdoors through her window, and, seeing trembling leaves in the trees, asked, “Would you like a coat? Looks like the night is a little chill.”

“I’m fine the way I am, thank you.”

“Are you sure?” Clarke frowned when she padded past her to her cabinet, the one with functional doors as compared to Lexa’s own. “I have a spare.”

“A few spares, it would seem.”

“So would you like one, or not?”

Lexa took her pocket-sized notepad from the desk and shoved it into the pocket of her pants, along with a short pencil, dwarfed with usage. “I’m fine.”

“If you say so.”

 

 

 

 

They went to a diner down corner of the street. Lexa breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of garishly checkered floors and fire-engine-red faux leather booths. Clarke grinned at her obvious relief, catching her swinging hand and holding it securely in her own.

They found a booth by the window and sat with steaming mugs of coffee.

“Looks like it might rain,” Lexa noted.

“It might just,” Clarke agreed. “Should have a borrowed a jacket.”

Lexa grimaced, “Do not mother me.”

Clarke laughed at the term, but it trailed off into a sigh. “Not so close to yours?”

“My mother passed away a long time ago,” Lexa said. She said it factually, void of emotion, because her mother’s death had been when she was just an infant, and she never truly knew her, and thus could not mourn her. But she did mourn the loss of a motherless childhood.

Clarke nodded, drank her coffee. “My condolences.”

Lexa accepted it with an indolent shrug of her shoulders.

“My mother is a stubborn, extremely pragmatic and efficient woman,” Clarke said. “I love her. And she loves me very dearly. But outside of that she would like to see me in medicine.”

Lexa hummed, but said nothing.

“I do see the uses and the practicalities. It interests me, even. And definitely keeps my mind challenged. But,” she falters, not knowing how to continue or what to say, and smiles instead.

“I understand,” Lexa said. “I can’t relate, but I understand.”

“And what about your father?”

“Gone. I was raised by aunts. And yours?”

“Dead.”

Clarke looked fine, seemed fine, even. But there was an imperceptible shake of her fingers upon closer inspection. Lexa looked about and asked, “Do you think we can smoke in here?”

“It’s New Orleans,” Clarke said. “Of course we can.”

And they smoked and talked and laughed when the food arrived.

Then, much later, tangled on Clarke’s feather bed, Lexa asked, “When we do these things we do, do they mean anything?”

Clarke, half-asleep, cracked an eye open to glance at her. “What do we do?”

“Sleep together,” Lexa had wanted to say ‘make love’ but it sounded sappy and cringe-worthy in her ears and she slowly made the amendment. “When we kiss.”

Lexa had looked at Clarke as though she was on tenterhooks, with something just shy of hopeful in her eyes. Clarke didn’t know what to make of it.

“Do you not do those things with your roommate, that Raven?”

Lexa felt her stomach fall, and not in the pleasant way. She blinked, the sting barely registering. “Oh.”

Clarke’s eyes opened quickly. “Does that bother you?”

Lexa could be content, she supposed, just being there the way they were. It would definitely be easier, less messy. “No, it doesn’t.”

But, oh, it would be so much nicer if Clarke would only—what? Even she didn’t know what it was that she wanted. How could she ask that of Clarke, then?

At Lexa’s downcast eyes, Clarke held her tighter. Her eyes flitted to the gold-framed photo on the desk, and she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Why would you be?”

“There’s no need to raise your voice at me,” Clarke frowned, a little taken aback. “I said I’m sorry.”

“I hadn’t meant to,” Lexa said, surprised herself. “I’m sorry.”

Clarke patiently shook her head. “That’s alright.”

 

 

 

 

Lexa came over often, only to finish up her writing and leave. Her manuscript grew and grew in length and finally, after countless rounds of editing, she had shakily submitted it to be published by a small firm.

Clarke had bought champagne and brought out the champagne flutes in celebration prematurely. Lexa was scheduled to come over at six, but now it was half-past-seven and she was growing worried by the second.

She drove her mother’s Buick down to Lexa’s flat. Rapped on the door, painted white and peeling, when there was a grunt and the door swung open. Raven’s eyes widened at the sight of her, but Raven looked weary, with grease and black oil smears on her white singlet and her cheek.

Fortunately Octavia was absent.

“You,” Raven had said almost accusingly. “Why are you here? Isn’t Lexa with you?”

Clarke tilted her head, bemused. She frowned. “What do you mean? Isn’t she _here_?”

Raven’s eyes grew wide with alarm. “No.”

“Christ. We’ve got to find her, now.”

Raven seconded the motion, locking the door behind her and following after Clarke.

They both did not think, purposely or otherwise, what Lexa’s disappearance had meant.

 

 

 

 

They eventually did find her. Sitting by a brown river that was polluted and lazily streaming downwards; the current wasn’t strong. From the river you could see the L&N railway tracks, and when a train passed you could be almost be temporarily deafened by it sitting so close.

Lexa sat hunched on the grass, haunches muddied. Her eyes red-rimmed, but no longer crying. It seemed she had had enough of crying. There was nothing to cry about. Literally, nothing.

She hadn’t a bottle like Clarke would have expected, but she was obviously drunk, as evidenced by her hiccupping, made shuddery by fresh tears. Lexa was moaning blues, voice deepened in her throat to imitate how such songs are sung—with a certain dolefulness like a wolf howling at the moon.

Clarke hung back while Raven charged forwards, saying, “Jesus _Christ_ , Lex. What are you _doing_?”

Clarke felt strangely out-of-place the way she never had before. It wasn’t the feeling of being embarrassingly over or under-dressed at a function, or anywhere in public. It was an odd, unnerving feeling that made her skin crawl.

Lexa laughed wetly and swatted Raven’s hands away with her own, flailing and unfocused.

Lexa, when drunk, said nothing, but laughed and smiled a whole lot like a mute halfwit. Raven had begun to help an uncooperative Lexa up, and Clarke stared, mind grasping at unusual thoughts until Raven, bad leg nearly buckling at the added weight, snapped, “Help, please.”

Together, with one of Lexa’s arm slung around their necks, they helped her into the car, and as Clarke drove, Raven said, a hint of desperation and panic rising in her voice, “She’s not usually like that. Please don’t misunderstand. I don’t exactly know what your relationship with her is, but she’s not always like this, if ever.”

Clarke nodded, an offered a small smile. “Why would you explain that to me?”

Raven frowned minutely at the glovebox. “Please don’t think less of her.”

Clarke leaned back in her seat and sighed. “I don’t.” Then she insisted, “Let me take her back to my place.”

Raven’s frown remained as she swivelled to glance at Lexa unconscious in the back seat. She scrutinised Clarke. “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

“I just think she’d want that.”

“And how would you know what she wants?” Raven challenged; it was a moot point, Clarke thought. Raven did know Lexa longer than she had.

But was it Raven Lexa had feelings for?

“My place is much more comfortable. When she’s that drunk, she would want to go through a hangover with warm water and a feather mattress.”

Raven was dropped-off at her shared flat. But before Clarke could drive away, she held the door ajar and said, “Take care of her.” It felt like a threat. The door was slammed shut.

 

 

 

 

Lexa awoke feeling like her heart was removed from her chest and shoved into her head—the throbbing was, to be lenient, intense. Each throb aligned with her heartbeat, which she also felt throughout her feverish body.

But when she had groaned and stared regretfully at the ceiling, she noticed that there were no mouldy spots in the corners, nor was it cracked. It seemed to expand over a larger square area, as well.

The bed underneath her was soft—certainly softer than hers. It smelled cleaner too, more hygienic, without the sour pungencies of bodily fluids, sweat or otherwise.

There was a faint scent of coffee in the air. The scent was thinned by the intrusion of outside air, allowed in by the open window. The sun was high in the sky and unforgivably hot, the way it only got at noon.

She slept till noon.

She looked about, recognised it to be Clarke’s flat, and sat up. The world tipped momentarily. She only moved again once the world had stilled and the nausea that had risen up her throat was tampered down by copious swallows of bitter saliva.

Her mouth felt like how she imagined it would smell. Horrible.

“Clarke?” she croaked, cleared her throat, tried again.

Clarke emerged from the kitchen in a baby blue shirt that only reached her thighs—a man’s shirt. Lexa didn’t want to deal with this early—fine, late in the afternoon. She wiped at her crusty eyes.

Clarke approached the bed tentatively. Clarke had always been sure, unimpeachable. Now, it was a peculiar thing, to see Clarke so hesitant and it seemed to have bothered her, too; there was an inwardly frown on her face.

“I would ask,” Clarke began softly, aware of Lexa’s sensitive condition, “if you were feeling alright. But if I looked like that and you were me, you’d tell me how appalling I look.”

Despite herself, Lexa laughed wincingly. “That bad?”

Clarke smiled a gentle and solicitous smile. “You know how we have posters for anti-drinking? Your face could be on the next batch. If I had submitted your photo, I’d be a lot richer as we speak.”

“But then we wouldn’t be speaking,” Lexa amended.

Clarke said, “True.”

“And I would sue you.”

“Would you really?”

“Of course. Do you really think I would allow you to get rich, when you obviously already are, with _my_ face?”

“Right now it’s barely a face.”

“Are you itching for a fight?”

Clarke’s smile was absurdly humoured. “ _You_ want to fight _me_? In the state you’re in? You can barely stand, let alone fight.”

“I don’t need fists to fight.”

“I assure you, if we’re fighting,” Clarke said, “it would eventually end up in a fist fight. Someone’s knife would be at someone’s throat, for certain.”

“Is that so?”

Clarke crawled up to Lexa, forcing her carefully down back on the bed. She had repeated how unpleasant Lexa had looked, but she leaned down anyways, a loose curl tickling the bridge of Lexa’s nose, and kissed her cheekbone.

“Definitely,” Clarke said.

Lexa felt the strain of fabric where Clarke’s shoulder blades were prominent. She rolled over to stroke along the slanted bone. 

“Why were you drinking, yesterday?” Clarke asked and lightened the loaded weight of the question by pressing a palm to the side of Lexa’s face.

She felt Lexa’s jaw harden. “I think…you already know why.”

“I won’t know for sure until you say it.”

“I refuse to say it aloud.”

Clarke smiled then, and kissed Lexa on the corner of her mouth. “Alright,” she conceded. “I won’t pry it out of you. Though I fathom I could.”

“Could you really?”

“Would you like a try?”

“Go ahead.”

Clarke kissed her again.

 

 

 

 

Lexa stayed till the yellow yolk of a sun dipped underneath the horizon and plunged the world into a wine-purple.

“You’re wearing Finn’s shirt,” Lexa noted.

Clarke, nude and pouring coffee into mugs, said, “Or I _was_. Until someone tore it off and then proceeded to be practically incapacitated throughout the entire affair because of a hangover.”

“Blame it on my libido, sure.”

Lexa, hangover mostly slept away by then, went to the desk, where a beige sketchbook sat in the middle of the mahogany wood, as if asking to be discovered.

Lexa touched the hardened cover of the book, and called, “Clarke, may I see?”

Clarke poked her head out the kitchen and blushed slightly, but nodded. Reverently, Lexa flipped through the book. There were sketches of various things, all done with a certain level and air of professionalism, bolded by darker graphite or the sharpened point of charcoal—the bare chest of a man, Finn’s side profile, a femur, a labelled diagram of a spine—interlude of pressed flowers here—a heart (valves and arteries and all), a curly head of hair that was shaded in varying shades of brown, the cityscape, her flat, her bare and naked back, remembered from when she had asked about the photo of Clarke and Finn, her sleeping face (fortunately not her hungover one), the bare shoulder of a woman, capturing deliciously the hollow above the right collarbone and the bunched muscle there, the promising shadow of dark hair spilling over the slope of the shoulder…

“You drew me,” Lexa had stated, when Clarke had joined her at the desk.

“It was a poor sketch. I tried,” Clarke had said, but the timorousness of her voice belied a desire for approval, for reassurance.

So Lexa gave it to her. She only gave what she thought was deserved, after all. “Don’t even. You’re very gifted.”

Clarke smiled.

“And you drew me,” Lexa repeated.

Clarke held her sketch, over Lexa’s fingers on the tough paper, and there it felt like a promise, a vow. “You were a figure worth sketching.”

“Again, trying to profit from _my_ face,” Lexa said, but she smiled as she said it, as though she wouldn’t mind it at all, not one bit.

“I would never,” Clarke said at Lexa’s ear. “These are mine. Private property.”

“Selfish. I like that.”

Clarke was silent for a beat, then asked softly, in a manner that was heart-wrenchingly vulnerable yet brave, “If you would like, I would want to sketch more of you, for a longer time afterward, possibly maybe even forever.”

“That’s ridiculous—you’re not immortal,” Lexa snorted, ever the realist.

“Well, until I die, then.”

“What about until _I_ die?”

“Hopefully I’d still be around to draw you from memory,” she whispered and took the sketch from Lexa’s hands tenderly, “and look here.” She flipped to the sketch of Lexa’s back, detailed in the muscle and bone and notches of the spine, and continued, “I’m already very good at it. You have a very prominent, salient place in my memory.”

“I will one day grow old, and become too ugly for your sketches. And your memory will also one day, no matter how keen, fade.”

“You’re very difficult to please,” Clarke remarked, but bit Lexa’s earlobe and teased it with her teeth. “Don’t fret, my love, if ever should my mind forget, my hands will always remember. And you would never be too ugly to be drawn.”

“So I’m ‘your love’ now, am I?”

“Do you want to be?”

Clarke saw the spreading, uncontrollable grin on Lexa’s face. “Damn right I do.”

And they fell into bed together and afterward Lexa would write as Clarke would draw. That was how they memorialised each other, after all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I realise it might come off as abrupt, most likely OOC, but I've tried my best. Thanks for making it this far. Cheers!


End file.
